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Chapter 1 - War (TWB)
Year 1987, Month Flower, Day 1 Eelee sat down in his Slightly-Bigger-Than-Anyone-Else's-Chair™. The grandfather clock above his blue and white large chair struck midnight, chiming twelve times. Eelee sighed; his team was late as usual. It was his understanding that the rest of the team had elected to celebrate the dawn of 1987 in the Mushroom Kingdom, where the Troupe was an honoured guest of Princess Peach. Swiping his tidy mop of brown hair out of his eyes, he bent over the book he was reading by the artificial lights dangling above him. The red and gold cover read "HERMAPHRODITES IN THE MUSHROOM KINGDOM." He was clad in a full sleeve red shirt and jeans as his dark eyes began to rapidly rake the page for information. 1987 was a new dawn for the Mushroom Kingdom. A month ago - and in the Mushroom World, a month was 73 days - a villain by the name of Extrak threatened the niche the Mushroom Kingdom had carved out. However, as with the many villains before him, the Troupe had risen to the occasion, and defeated him. For the first time in years, a peaceful month had been lived out. Celebrations were afoot. Eelee had abstained from the celebrations. He wasn't the only one of the heroes - Bowser Koopa and his general, Ultra, who had become somewhat of recluses in recent times, even refusing the other six heroes entry to Bowser's Castle recently - stood away the party as well. His second-in-command, Jamie, was leading the team at the festivities. Eelee had decided to stay in the books with a pressing issue on hand: He was establishing what gender one of his team members - Crystal - was. He had been with his team for a while; but they hadn't always been a team. By a stroke of chance, Eelee ventured from his distant Kingdom of Erkland - of which he was the King - to Mertropolis, a small, underwater city off the coast of Sarasaland, a peninsula on the west coast of the Mushroom Mainland, where he learned he had travelled to a parallel dimension. His immediate mission to get back to his Kingdom was halted when he met Jamie. As they found out, being a human of non-indigenous ancestry in the Mushroom Kingdom was a punishable offence. Why? A few weeks earlier, Bowser had accepted a powerful Mage known as Blumered into his castle. He wasn't indigenous to the Mushroom Kingdom, as with Eelee and Jamie. But unlike Eelee and Jamie, Blumered was seeking domination. He was the first of many villains to threaten the existence of the Mushroom Kingdom. Eelee and Jamie then took refuge in the Revolution, a non-indigenous group of humans planning to revolt for their rights in the Mushroom Kingdom. To the surprise of Eelee, the leader of the Revolution turned out to be none other than Eelee's long-lost uncle, L, hiding out in a base in the mountains. An alliance between the Revolution and the Koopa Kingdom led Blumered to his doom. The two heroes had met a third hero, Rob. Together, the three of them fought their way to Blumered, dispatching of young plumbers Mario and Luigi along the way, who were desperate to prove themselves in the Kingdom. Peace returned to the two Kingdoms on the west side of the Sarasaland Sea with the defeat of Blumered. Then began the politics. The alliance between the Koopa Kingdom and the Revolution dissolved, there were once again three sides with claim to the territory. The Mushroom Kingdom's claim was that they were the original rulers of the territory and fought their fair share to win it back from Blumered; he was fighting a war on two fronts. Their terms for reclaiming the Kingdom would be a return to the way things were before Blumered: exact territorial lines, exact government policies. Naturally, the two other parties shot that proposal down. The Koopa Kingdom wanted unilateral control of the territory, in which the Princess of the Mushroom Kingdom would be a ward of the Koopa Kingdom, while the Revolution wanted their members to return to their dimension and those who remained to be treated equally. As it would be in diplomacy, the Revolution's wish was the first granted as it was the smallest ask. The key to unlocking the dimensional portal lay in Mertropolis, where the ring Eelee wore on his finger - Reros - was initially built in the Mushroom Kingdom, when his ancestors stole it from their creator. All the non-indigenous humans returned to the dimension beyond The Mushroom World, except four. Eelee, Jamie, Rob and L. Jamie had nothing to go back to, Rob's past was a future that was in turmoil, and Eelee had a competent regent who would rule the Kingdom as well, if not better than he did. L, however, felt that he would watch over their old defeated villains, take Blumered to Prison J, a prison built underneath the bedrock of the sea. The other three decided to stay and live in the now vacated Mountain Base for the time being - it would later become their permanent residence. As it would be, the Mushroom Kingdom kept their independence at the cost of many territories, which were later won back by the Mushroom Kingdom and the heroes a few months later anyway. But the primary award for the heroes, was that they all received the Medal of Honor, the highest military honor a Mushroomian could get. Bowser refused to give them any award, profusely maintaining that the Koopa Kingdom "owe 'em nothing!" Come the next villain, Pixelgame, the Mushroom Kingdom naturally leaned back on the troupe that was Eelee, Jamie, and Rob, who did what Mario could not. And so, 1984, 1985 and 1986 were spent being the protectors of a Kingdom that had scorned them. Eelee's thoughts were disrupted by loud sounds thumping through the Mountain Base. The rest of the heroes were clearly back from the party. He had called them to the back to the Mountain Base for a reason. He was sick and tired of being a hero to the Mushroom Kingdom. The two plumbers - Mario and Luigi - were talented and athletic, even if they were a bit portly. They would be more fit to be Mushroom Kingdom heroes. Eelee had been drawn to the portal to the world because of his desire to explore. The borders of the Kingdom were beginning to press in; he craved freedom. The room Eelee was waiting in was a very humble one, with one entrance marked with carefully polished wooden double doors, an end table with eight chairs, and a sword-sharpening machine in the corner, currently off. Because they were underground, L - the original owner of the Mountain Base - had decided to hide the "tacky" earth and roots from view with perfect, pure, white marble, lined with artificial lights. Entering the room first was Jamie, his trusty katanas in the scabbards on his back. Jamie was a quirky person, often out for his own means and not really absorbed in the seriousness of various situations. He wore white robes most of the time, adorned with symbols of the ancient Koopan languages. A blue bandana usually masked his eternally dazzling teeth and smiling face from the public, and his hair grew naturally in tall, black-purple spikes above his head. His dark brown eyes gazed out from above the bandana, a cheerful glint in them. Following him was Rob, wearing similar robes, only black in colour. Also like Jamie, Rob shrouded the majority of his face most of the time. Self-conscious, the youngest of the troupe - only twenty-two - wore a red and blue mask with a tinted black visor built in, revealing his face to only himself in private. On his back he wore a homemade quiver with metal-tipped arrows, head down, inside. Strapped to his back was a crossbow, and on his waist was a scabbarded sword. Serious was an understatement for Rob. Everything was a battle between life and death for him. He halted next to Jamie, just inside the room. Third into the room was Yoshi, the largest and strongest of them. The burly hero wore a spiffy black suit and tie, with a white shirt visible under his blazer, and was effortlessly strong. He could pick up Eelee with one hand and throw him across the Mountain Base without even breaking a sweat. Despite his immense genetical gifts and staggering bodybuilding work ethic, Yoshi was much more in the Jamie mould - looking out for himself, and a weird sprinkling of bravery. Yoshi was the most courageous in the face of mortal danger, yet he would be running for the hills at the appearance of a small Wiggler. A heavy mace was always over his right shoulder, a weapon built his immense power. Black sunglasses shrouded his eyes and his hair was identical to Jamie's, just brown. Squirt was next, also in the brawny end of the gene pool. Squirt felt he would be a better leader for the team than Eelee, and so the two of them never looked eye to eye - Eelee loved leading the team. He probably had the most in common with Eelee, anyway. Yet Squirt was much stronger than Eelee hand-to-hand and battled with his weapon of choice, the nunchucks. Squirt wore a blue cape, and a brown and white matching pair of shirt and pants. His brown hair was slicked back in a mullet, and he sported stubble from his lower jaw. Rather than seeing Ultra or Bowser next, however, it was Crystal the gender-confused hero. Closer to resembling a girl, she wore a white dress, and her hair was long and resembling a girl's, and she wore big, rounded glasses on her nose. Eelee's research had established that she was neither a hermaphrodite nor a male, so he was quite positive she was just a confused girl. Crystal had just joined their team two weeks ago as Eelee leapt at the chance for hermaphrodite research; he wasn't sure if he wanted to keep bringing her along. She was one of the smaller heroes, along with Rob. "Where's Bowser?" Eelee asked as they stopped in the order they had many times before - Jamie, Rob, Yoshi, Squirt and Crystal, with surprising discipline, lining up at the other end of the table, across from Eelee. It was Rob who took a step forward and answered. "We didn't see him at the party." "And it was some PART-EE!" Jamie exclaimed, "Yoshi and I terrorized some Toads by dumping bottles of Chuckola Cola on their heads to make Chuckola Toada!" "Peach wasn't pleased you couldn't come, Eelee." Squirt acknowledged the oldest present, "mainly because her Toad retainers got drenched." Squirt angled his eyes at Jamie and Yoshi, who were now reminiscing about the reactions to "Chuckola Toada." Eelee snorted. "I could care less what Peach thinks," he continued, "but I do ''care where Bowser ''is. So he wasn't at the party? Then, where was he?" He scanned his team for any signs of an answer, but they all gave him non-committal shrugs, or in the case of Jamie and Yoshi, blank stares. "If I may," Squirt crossed his arms and leant back against the wall, making himself more comfortable. "I'd like to guess where Bowser is." "Well?" Eelee shot back, fixing Squirt with a questioning glare. "Don't leave me hanging?" Squirt absent-mindedly looked at his fingernails, and then spoke, not bothering to make eye contact with Eelee: "Isn't it obvious? He's preparing for war."